India’s sole television measurement company, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, had appointed an oversight committee in June 2019, to review its data validation and outlier policy which identifies and eliminates outliers including reach outliers. The two-member committee led by Nakul Chopra and Praveen Tripathi has successfully submitted its report to the board. The committee conducted an extensive review of the entire process and presented a very detailed assessment of the ongoing practice.
The committee stated that the current process is accurate and unbiased and recommended BARC India to continue to follow the process as it is. According to the committee, there is no manual intervention in the process for treating outliers. The entire process is driven by robust algorithms and rules which makes the process unbiased. This is applied to all channels in a fair manner which in return helps BARC India give transparent and reliable data to its subscribers. Over the last four years this process has been enhanced and made more robust. New learnings and increased automation has been incorporated with every change. The committee is also working closely with BARC India to further automate the identification and treatment of landing page.
BARC India chairman Punit Goenka stated, “The oversight committee has successfully submitted its report which should reinforce the faith of industry in the process. We have always ensured the fairness and transparency of all our processes and are proud that the findings of the committee reaffirm the same. We will continue working with the oversight committee and Industry members to improve the measurement standards”
As a long term solution, the committee also recommended that BARC India should appoint a permanent oversight committee which acts independently from a maker-checker standpoint. The board is reviewing the report and will decide on a concrete plan in the near future.
